Magazine Recipes

I surprisingly found myself at the library last week. My wandering took me a ways – all the way to the back issue magazines section – where I began to browse among the cooking magazines until I saw one that stopped me. I’d seen it before, too, so I knew that the craving was a double hit. There was the picture of a chocolate caramel tart that I really wanted to sink my teeth into.

Fortunately for me, I was able to organize a dinner party within the week, which was going to allow me to make said tart. All the dinner party attendees thought they were the fortunate ones as the tart was preceded by my own special purple potato gnocchi with hazelnut pesto, heirloom tomato and caramelized onion pizza, and baked ling cod. The fact that the dinner was pure whimsy and used only partial recipes or ‘idea-gathering’ from dozens heeded no casualties and I got pretty happy eaters. The rumor had spread that there was dessert, so most people eased off of dinner when that telephone game reached their ears.

I give all the credit to two sources: one, Marlow and Sons, in Brooklyn, NY, two, Saveur Magazine April 2009 issue, tucked away at the library in a difficult to find (unless the librarian explained the system to you) box behind a wooden compartment.

But, what can I say, I got the credit last weekend for an excellent tart, which is pretty easy, actually. The key is that you make the crust and let it sit then bake it, make the caramel and let it cool in the tart, then make the ganache and let that set up on top of the caramel that has cooled in the tart. Three easy steps, with a wait period between each one, and a delicious tart is yours. I think I’ll ‘wow’ the crowds again with that one. Or perhaps just myself right after lunch….

A-Town

Back in High School I was introduced to Thorton Wilder’s Our Town by my English teacher who casually mentioned that his daughter’s name was Emily. As his daughter was a classmate and my home town was not far removed from Grover’s Corner, except by ninety years and most of the distance of the United States, I already knew her name.

In Our Town, baseball was one of the themes of life and cars were new and exciting. In my day, I believe basketball was a higher ranking sport, and we were learning about personal computers. I don’t doubt that every one of us now has a laptop, not to mention a car.

As I was in Anacortes visiting my parents, the small town play seemed highly appropriate, so I read it the other morning. I may have read it before. I can’t be sure. But this time I realize that the stuff of the play is much less about baseball and cars than I had expected when I picked it up. (Which it ought to be, considering that it is part of the Franklin Library Classics.) Trappings aside, my view of small town life remains highly indistinguishable from Wilder’s in this play.

However, I find our narrator, who’s official title is Stage Manager, to be a really fascinating chap. He’s half townsperson and half universal being. What a strange situation, even if fairly typical of a small town where people do tend to take on a few different roles. The Manager physically sets the stage and introduces Grover’s Corners, but then he interacts with the characters at will, standing in for a preacher and a soda fountain jerk.

This Manager even brings in a variety of experts on the town, either from the university or local paper, to fill in some of the details. It’s a rather surprising addition considering he appears every bit as knowledgeable as his special guests. You’ll remember how the Manager puts together the newspaperman’s kitchen as we were all getting settled in to learn about Grover’s Corners. Not to get too logical about it, but if you know the layout of someone’s home and how many breakfasts they eat together, well then there’s little doubt that you couldn’t go ahead and fry the bacon, too.

But that seems to be Wilder’s point. Sure Mrs. Webb makes coffee every single morning, as regular as the milk delivery, but we must wrestle with the question of whether or not she savors it. She knows it’s good and right for her children to eat slowly, so I’m one who votes that she, too, remarks on the heliotrope in the Gibbs’ garden as readily as saints and poets do.

Obscurity in the USA

Two of my meals on a recent day were absolutely cliché. Breakfast: two scrambled eggs with salt and pepper, two slices of toast, buttered with homemade raspberry jam, a pear, and tea with milk. Lunch: peanut butter and honey on whole wheat sandwich, carrot, apple, glass of milk, and two my-version ‘cowboy’ cookies. My plans for dinner were: pasta with tomato, basil and onion sauce, sautéed dandelion greens, and, if I’m lucky, red wine.

See, a CSA box isn’t that weird! Ok, when I looked at the long dandelion greens the other morning and asked the market clerk, “What’s that?” I didn’t have a clear idea about how I was going to integrate the greens into my weekly vegetable consumption, although after she identified them I immediately recognized the leaf, posing a further (internal) question, “Why are you selling me this?” The fact that I got two more green cabbages also fills me with some trepidation. But, I’m looking on the bright side, which is that I’m going to visit my parents later and THEY can figure out just what to make of the cylinder beets, my growing stockpile of bunches of radishes, and those scarlet runner beans I’ve now had for two weeks….

Last night’s dinner was a CSA salad, miso soup with onion and CSA bok choy.

Beyond that it gets fuzzy, but other successful meals last week include:

Obscure CSA greens casserole (kale, chard, herbs, beet greens, radish greens, spinach, arugula, mizuna, frisee, etc. Sautee, then toss with a béchamel , cover in cheese and bran nibs, and bake! Ta-da, delicious.)

Plum and rice stuffed CSA bell peppers

Ground CSA wheat berries flour in a plum cake

CSA lettuce salads with CSA radishes

Snacks of plums, CSA nectarines and CSA pears

So, how creative does one have to be? Pretty creative, really. Especially since broccoli shows up regularly, and how is one to eat that much of it? Once every couple of months is fine, but every other week? It’s draining on my artistic ability in the kitchen. I’m about ready to just make plate decorations with the newest cucumber I got – can you believe they sent another one! My lifetime intake of green cabbage has taken a multiple hundreds of percentage increase. But it’s all ok, because I really, really didn’t know that some obscure greens are so good (in sauce), and I had an ear of corn nearly every day last week!

Also, since I pawn off all the boring cauliflower (and because I figured it was somewhat greedy and therefore made it up by having baked turnips the following night), I’ll just mention quietly that I ate four baby Jerusalem artichokes with a hazelnut vinaigrette for dinner not too long ago and it was heavenly!

Polysyllablism

You want to know why Nick Hornby resonates so well? It’s because he’s brilliant, that’s why. I skipped multiple reading group sessions this summer because I couldn’t take one more book about artists and authors. What does Hornby criticize authors for (to the chagrin of the Spree, mind you)? All these mad books about bookish people! Hello, if we read them we’re those people and don’t want to hear about it! (Wait. I’m agreeing with an author, while reading his book about books he’s reading, that books about writing come across to me as somewhat ridiculous and less interesting as other subjects? Hmmm. Ok, unless, of course, it’s you, Nick, giving voice to the tiresomeness of it, then.)

And, as I was sitting on the front porch, chuckling at something else he wrote, my neighbor walked by and commented,
“Good book?”
“Oh, great! Nick Hornby.”
“I’ll have to put it on my reading list.”
“It’s his Complete Polysyllabic Spree where he discusses everything he’s reading.”
Pause.
Me again, “Have you read him before?”
“No.”
“Oh, he’s fabulous! Nick Hornby – British!”

Sorry, Nick, I may not have pulled that one out for you.

The truth is, Hornby not only writes his (somewhat) monthly articles about what he’s reading, which would be entertaining enough, but he actually creates tension with the editorial board, nearly giving his segment a plot! So, not only have I developed an abundant list of new books to read, I enjoyed the list-making in a genuinely pleasant way! Shall I share what I took away from The Diary of an Occasionally Exasperated But Ever Hopeful Reader? No, I’ll allow you to get the satisfaction for yourself.

Summer with a hint of easy

I don’t know that anyone could conjure up anything more wonderful than the fresh, ripe, juicy nectarines I’ve been eating recently. Even eating them I’m so excited by the next dripping sweet bite that I rush through the whole thing with nothing to show but a pit and a sticky hand (which I lick).

Stone fruit, or any tree fruit, I was just recently told, doesn’t grow everywhere. If I’m ever to be a genuine locavore, those places are herewith crossed off my list. But my food fanaticism has less to do with location than quality, so I refuse to engage in premature concern. My second ‘however’ relates to the unlikelihood of coming to such a pass, considering this is new knowledge and does not apply to any of the places I’ve lived within my memory years.

The now only slightly tacky hand writing this, earlier made a nectarine sorbet base. I did it somewhat like a jam and somewhat like a poach. I started by making a heavy syrup with 3 pounds of sugar, added 7 pounds of fruit, and a ½ cup of lemon juice, then cooked them until the fruit exploded against the pot with gentle pressure.

I pureed and strained the whole while still warm. A tester came along with her spoon about then for verification purposes and exclaimed, “Oh! It tastes like summer!” Oh, and it does taste like summer today again and again, every single bite and lick of it.

Stop Following Me! But please read on....

Sometimes, just standing there, do you ever get chills and look around to see what’s the matter? Or, walk more briskly when there’s someone right behind you, or in my case, less briskly so they can pass? It’s one of those strange gut feelings that must be listened to, but really probably doesn’t matter if the other is a real piece of work.

My prayers at dinner took a stride towards specificity after I finished Kate Brennan’s In His Sites. ‘Thank-you, Lord, for my safety and ability to be.’ I concur, as she puts it, that there’s always someone who’s having a harder time. I know this from many sources, but each day I thank God for some new thing I hadn’t realized before. I’m not the point of fixation for a madman, and that is good news!

This book, a story of one woman’s meeting, loving, and leaving a man, rather mundane as far as it goes, shoots into high gear when we discover he’s a sex addicted (his diagnosis) psychopath (my diagnosis) who dedicates years – over a decade and counting – of his life to tormenting her thereafter.

What I seem to always ask is: How does such a competent woman, obviously capable of a solid writing career, with demonstrated talent in this compelling autobiography, get into such a mess? The too pat answer is that she experienced this to learn and grow as a person, and then to teach, through writing the story. These were both explored and counted valid by the author. This sounds somewhat peaceful for such a menace to inhabit her life. But, maybe that is what it’s about. I’m certainly aware of further social deviances from reading this than I had been before.

But the next question points towards me: Why did I choose to read this? Well, the Seattle libraries, in response to the current economic downturn, closed for a week, so I went and stocked up on reading material in my #2 preferred location and saw this on the new/recommended shelf. But, as I didn’t pick up the others, I admit to a grand curiosity on how men and women relate, with stalking as part of it all that makes no sense. I don’t even keep up extraordinarily well with good friends whom I hold dear, so who could be motivated to chase an ex who wants rid of you???

All this to say, there’s yet another mark against the independently wealthy, which the stalker is. But, more to the point, there’s a strong cautionary note about getting involved in relationships with psychotic people. That I can fully embrace – no rich lunatics for me!

Generally speaking, men can be put at ease as Kate only has hard feelings about specific unrepentant men with specific unsavory behaviors. Namely: drunkenness, bribery, sexual misconduct, lying, manipulation, domination, and stalking. Pretty much everyone else gets a pass.

One of her greatest points was when she decided to leave Paul. Kate described how she just had to stop listening to his pleas and think clearly about his actions. In that line of reasoning, so what if I praise this book as well-written, informative, and a page turner. Concentrate on how I got to the library and read it straight through. That tells all!

Plum Crazy

I’m curious as to whether that expression is due to the absurd amount of plums that come raining down from the trees right about now and seem to have no actual projected end date. Crazy is forever.

And this goes on and on! I’ve made plum chutney, plum jam, plum cakes; I’ve halved and frozen plums, poached plums, dehydrated plums, and eaten plums. I’ve given away plums, which takes some work, as many other people seem to also have an abundance of the small purple bowel movers themselves. I took probably 30 or more pounds of plums to a food bank and found it closed. Disappointment!

All that said, my favorite thing so far was picking them. No, not because I enjoy the wobbly ladder to which I have access, or the myriad spiders crawling and swinging around me, or seeing (and avoiding) the plums that managed to rot on the tree, or even the rain that came when I was about half way and made me decide to put off the rest for the following day. The thing I liked was getting up high and reaching.

Um, I know, reminds one a little bit of step aerobics. But it was five steps up, reach, pick, toss, reach, pick, toss. I wasn’t being at all gentle with these guys and really did drop them down to the bucket I had balanced on the ladder’s shelf by my feet. And who wouldn’t! It’s fun to be up in a tree finding fruit, but once it’s found, and I realized early on that there was a whole lot of it, then there’s the of a chore of figuring out what to do with it. No interest at all in the one that goes astray with all 99 of the others clamoring for attention!

I’ll admit that the plum cake was fabulous. I froze enough plums that I’ll be able to make that any time I like all winter long. The cake is from a recipe I found about three years ago online and have since lost, but, you know, I remember the essentials: plums, sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, spices, buttermilk. It turns out fabulously no matter how I make it, so the essential aspect is definitely the plums. And it’s true that there were no eggs originally and I still don’t add any, which switches this cake into a sort of biscuit in my mind, which translates loosely into a cobbler, so to call it a cake at all is mere politeness to the original baker.

So my good times in the tree out front will make many more good times in the kitchen. If I decide it was all worthwhile, then I still have the other plum tree out back to start in on!! Crazy!

Huckleberry Season

Sometimes I think I’ll just go reread a book because I just don’t remember it well and know it to be important literature. Sometimes I realize that there’s no way I ever read the book initially as I would have HAD to remember something, considering it was so vibrant.

This takes me to Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I ‘re’read just the other week and came away with the strange sensation of being introduced to entirely new material. Now, I know I’ve read about Tom Sawyer. In the 5th grade we did a school play with the whitewashing scene. The same one my brother’s class did a few years earlier, so I already could practically quote it when it was supposed to be fresh. But I never went on to Huck’s adventures that year or any other until now.

Somehow I just lumped the two stories together. I didn’t add the frog jumping contest short story to the pile, which I know I only just read last year and found a bit nutty. But there does seem to be something nutty about these stories of kids and adults and culture and river that are at once familiar and entirely mystical. How could a grown man be like Jim? How could a young boy be like Huck? What changes in America have wrought those persons unbelievable?

And yet, isn’t it just like a child to run away from bad and not so bad just to be free? And wouldn’t a man in danger need more help and be more faithful than one who saw himself as autonomous? And doesn’t every other character we meet, whether capricious, conniving, gullible, dangerous or endearing, somehow keep us thinking that humanity may have new trappings, but is not too far removed from the low banks of the Mississippi?

The pleasant times Huck and Jim enjoy make me yearn to float alongside them, but the scrapes and storms and general uncertainty let me know that what baffles me would confuse anyone, and when I am at the end of the line, well, maybe a canoe will come along and keep me afloat. Huck and Jim extend measures of grace which are unparalleled by their main associates, creating the most unlikely heroes. These heroes, though, are ones I will not forget and hope to even reread for real!